Curators speak on everyday and ancient art of papermaking
On June 16, at 6:30 p.m., the Grace Hudson Museum will host a virtual talk on the rich history and diverse expressions of the art of papermaking. The presentation will feature Melissa H. Potter and Reni Gower, cocurators of the exhibition “Pulped Under Pressure: The Art of Handmade Paper,” now running at the museum through Aug. 14.
The seven artists in this exhibit combine a sense of urgency at the environmental devastations and social injustices of our time with a deep sense of beauty. They seek to broaden and increase the scope of what is defined as art by a focus on the labor of women. Physical labor is honored and incorporated in the very art of papermaking, an elaborate process based on ancient techniques.
Form and content mesh in many of the show’s artworks: paper is both the blank form on which multiple forms of expression flourish, and the paper is itself an art form, often with roots and shoots of the plants they are made from visible in the fabric.
The seeds of the exhibit were planted in 2014 at Columbia College in Chicago, when Professor Potter, who had been papermaking most of her life, invited Gower to take up residency as a visiting artist and to spend time in the papermaking studio. Gower, until then primarily a painter, took to papermaking quickly and saw new opportunities to transfer her knowledge of color and form onto the new medium. She approached Potter with the idea of a group exhibit of papermaking and community-oriented artists, and “Pulped Under Pressure” was born. The first pilot exhibit happened in 2016, with the exhibit soon touring coast to coast.
A garden in Chicago
A community organizer, filmmaker, and artist, Melissa H. Potter has served as the guiding spirit for the Columbia College papermaking garden for 12 years, collaborating with artist Maggie Puckett (also in the exhibit) and others. Lucky enough to be given a huge garden space by the college in its densely populated South Loop neighborhood, Potter and her associates made use of heirloom seeds to grow culinary and medicinal plants, and to create artwork based on the themes and fruits of the garden. They ended up creating and assisting on satellite gardens around the city. This meshes well with Potter’s firm emphasis on collaboration, a keystone of her art practice rooted in feminist principles. “My core philosophy is that there isn’t anything that exists without collaboration,” she comments. “I think collaboration in the 20th century is a form of resistance. Collaboration is what traditional culture is founded on.”
Potter has received Fulbright Fellowships to travel to Serbia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, in the Balkan area of southeast Europe. There she studied what she calls “intangible heritage practices,” the folkways — both spiritual and practical — handed down from generation to generation that transmit knowledge of plant and animal cultivation. She learned how practices were tied to the seasons, to both human and more-than-human rhythms. Practices seen as mundane now were traditionally imbued with symbolic significance. “When a woman spins (fabric or paper) it connects to the rotations of the earth.”
The process of papermaking
For Potter, the process of papermaking begins in the garden. Burdock, an ancient medicinal plant, is grown and employed for papermaking. Plants high in cellulose are favored, including potato vine, yarrow, and milkweed, as well as the prairie grasses that are native to the Midwest. After Potter harvests the plants, she pulps the material, suspends it in water, and forms it into sheets using molds and deckles. She then cuts the paper into strips, spins it with a drop spindle into thread, and warps it. Finally, she weaves the spun paper in and out of the vertical strings, forming a grid.
Papermaking, then, is as much about process as product. “My studio practice is a slow one,” Gower comments. “It’s very cathartic and contemplative. I’m hoping my viewer can also come to a place that’s a respite.” Her artwork, including a series of foursquare, abstract patterns, painstakingly created using only a box cutter or a spray bottle, recalls sacred geometric patterns such as Amish quilts, Celtic knotwork, and Islamic tile. “I really think it’s a universal language,” Gower says of these patterns. “We recognize the ratios because they inform everything in our world, from the micro to the macro. Everyone recognizes the perfection of the circle, the square, the triangle in similar ways … through Sacred Geometry. I love how you can communicate across cultures to overcome difference.”
Layers of meaning
The diverse artworks in “Pulped Under Pressure” contain layers of meaning, some of which point away from the contemplative toward an activist intent. The title of the exhibit itself is pointed: the pressures of the times, which include the erosion of rights for women and nonwhite peoples and the mounting crises of climate change, fuel the artworks of several of the contributors. This includes Potter herself, whose series “Craft Power: Tusheti Rugs” embeds El wires in flax paper and pulp paint to fashion a modern version of the felt rugs woven by women in the Republic of Georgia.
Julia Goodman’s work honors the labor of the ragpickers of the 19th and early 20th century, who would sort through the materials of the time — old clothing, blankets, rope — to separate out the crude fiber for recycling into paper. Jillian Bruschera also casts paper bricks with obsolete technologies to address waste and sustainability. Marilyn Propp uses colored pulp paper to produce gorgeous images of turtles (a symbol of resilience) swimming through oceans polluted with automobile parts and other detritus. Maggie Puckett’s work addresses the impact of climate change. And Filipina artist Trisha Oralie Martin creates block prints inspired by traditional tattoo designs employed by elders in her native country — an art form which is disappearing because the younger generation has not taken up the practice.
“You have this thing of beauty that can be more than a blank slate; what do you do with it?” Gower muses of the papermaking process. Collaborating across time and space, honoring past pressures and laboring under new ones, the seven artists of “Pulped Under Pressure” have come up with fresh responses to inspire a troubled world.
For a link to the talk, go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org and scroll down to the description of the talk.
“Pulped Under Pressure” was organized and is being traveled by Reni Gower and Wylie Contemporary, Inc. It will be on display until Aug. 14. A mobile mill papermaking workshop will be held on the Saturday following the talk, on June 18, led by Jillian Bruschera, one of the artists featured in the exhibition. Additional workshops, led by local papermaking artists, will occur at the museum on July 16 and Aug. 7.
For more information go to the website, or call (707) 467-2836.